Why it works: Ham and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,526 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓
Ham and Eggs
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the ham
Cut the ham into thin slices and quarter them.
Put the ham into boiling water and simmer for five minutes, then drain the water.
Fry the ham
Fry the ham and keep the ham warm.
Fry the eggs
Cover the bottom of a large baking pan with lard.
Crack each egg into a cup to check for freshness.
Fry the eggs in the pan.
Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.
Explore the science
The flavor team
The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.
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Ham + eggtop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,526 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Ham
- Provides the salty, savoury meat that forms the main body of the dish.
- Eggs
- Set when fried, giving the dish its main structure and rich texture.
- Lard
- Conducts heat to the pan and adds fat, helping the food brown while frying.
The step that matters
Fry the eggs in the pan. Egg whites set at moderate heat. Too much heat makes the edges brown and tough while the yolks stay raw, and too little leaves the whites runny.
“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.
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